Routledge Advances in Event Research Series - Böcker

Festival and Event Tourism Impacts provides a comprehensive review and analysis of the multi-faceted impacts that festival and events have on a host community, whether positive or negative, and offers recommendations for communities for the successful management of this kind of tourism. Opening chapters define festival and event tourism impact concepts utilized in the field and their evolution throughout the years, followed by an exploration of the current issues facing communities. The second part discusses sustainability and environmental issues that affect destinations and communities as a result of festival and event impacts. Subsequent chapters outline further impacts and finally address cutting-edge event tourism development and impact management strategies and considerations such as innovative management approaches, sustainability, and social responsibility, for example, and identify future trends and issues within a multidisciplinary global perspective. A variety of geographical locations are exemplified throughout as well as a range of diverse event types including the Formula One Grand Prix in Monaco, Pope Francis’ visit to Mauritius in 2019, and the 29th Summer Universiade in Taiwan, among many others. Drawing on the knowledge and expertise of highly regarded academics from around the world, this will be of great interest to all upper-level students and researchers in Tourism, Hospitality, Events, and related fields.

This book explores and advances the latest concepts and developments in event management theory and practice.Drawing on the ever-growing event management literature – and supported by theories and concepts from parent disciplines – the book examines challenges and opportunities related to maximising business and social benefits for those working in different event management positions in a variety of contexts. Written by an international team of five management scholars, the book investigates event management and leverage from various angles, including international business, event business studies, sport management, community development, and business strategy. It does so by offering a combination of theoretical approaches as well as contemporary cases from around the world.This book will be of interest to undergraduate and postgraduate students of event management, as well as scholars researching in social and business-related areas of event management and leverage.

Festival and Event Tourism Impacts provides a comprehensive review and analysis of the multi-faceted impacts that festival and events have on a host community, whether positive or negative, and offers recommendations for communities for the successful management of this kind of tourism. Opening chapters define festival and event tourism impact concepts utilized in the field and their evolution throughout the years, followed by an exploration of the current issues facing communities. The second part discusses sustainability and environmental issues that affect destinations and communities as a result of festival and event impacts. Subsequent chapters outline further impacts and finally address cutting-edge event tourism development and impact management strategies and considerations such as innovative management approaches, sustainability, and social responsibility, for example, and identify future trends and issues within a multidisciplinary global perspective. A variety of geographical locations are exemplified throughout as well as a range of diverse event types including the Formula One Grand Prix in Monaco, Pope Francis’ visit to Mauritius in 2019, and the 29th Summer Universiade in Taiwan, among many others. Drawing on the knowledge and expertise of highly regarded academics from around the world, this will be of great interest to all upper-level students and researchers in Tourism, Hospitality, Events, and related fields.

The use of sporting and other mega-events to bring about transformation of socially deprived areas of major cities is becoming an increasingly important part of the raison d'être for hosting such events, especially given the immense costs involved and the current economic climate. The tax-paying public increasingly has to be persuaded of the benefits, beyond the event itself, to spend the nation’s resources in this way. This edited book, written by international experts, critically explores these multiple facets of the Mega Event legacy looking at the various economic, environmental and social impacts and benefits in multiple continents. It considers topics such as volunteering, participation, economics, sponsorship, ethics and technology in relation to legacy.This timely book provides a further understanding of the legacy discourse, as well as the potential pitfalls connected to legacy in relation to mega events. Filling a gap in the literature on legacy research, Legacies and Mega Events will be of interest to events, sports, tourism, urban development students, researchers and academics.

The Value of Events fills an important niche in the literature on events, being the first book to comprehensively deal with the subject of value creation and measurement, as opposed to impact assessment and programme evaluation. Value creation and measurement is often done routinely from specific perspectives such as tourism, event management, corporate marketing, or customer satisfaction. However, there exist a number of discourses on value and evaluation that have not yet received adequate attention, including the justification of governmental intervention and the costs and benefits of hosting major events.This edited book, written by an international group of academics with expertise in the relevant fields of events, tourism, sport and culture, offers new insight into events and their relationship to sustainability, social responsibility, cultural and social value. Fostering debate in the context of conceptual thinking, philosophising, multiple stakeholder perspectives and interdisciplinary approaches, it challenges the events industry, students, policy-makers and strategists with new perspectives on value, with implications for impact forecasting and assessment.This is a book for all students pursuing degrees in fields where planned events are important topics, while being of great interest to researchers, policy-makers, evaluators and organisers/managers of planned events. Within a subject in need of further attention, The Value of Events offers the most comprehensive overview of event value to date.

This unique volume examines death from a socio-cultural events perspective. Drawing on the empirical and conceptual work produced by an international body of researchers, it is the first publication to look at death, dying, memorialization, and their mediation, from an events orientation. By placing the contribution of these scholars together, this book provides a unique opportunity to instigate an international, critical discussion, around the connectivities associated with death and events. Chapters consider connections to death and events on many levels, including individual, local, communally based, construals of the event landscape; the relationship between death and events into larger socio-cultural frames of reference. Chapteres also consider how death and events are manifest through diverse platforms of mediation, with a discussion of the media presentation of end of life events, and the articulation of death online. Case studies from a wide-ranging selection of countries, from Moscow to Bangladesh to Cambodia, are examined throughout. This will be of great interest to upper-level students and researchers in event studies as well as a variety of other disciplines such as sociology and cultural studies.

This unique volume examines death from a socio-cultural events perspective. Drawing on the empirical and conceptual work produced by an international body of researchers, it is the first publication to look at death, dying, memorialization, and their mediation, from an events orientation. By placing the contribution of these scholars together, this book provides a unique opportunity to instigate an international, critical discussion, around the connectivities associated with death and events. Chapters consider connections to death and events on many levels, including individual, local, communally based, construals of the event landscape; the relationship between death and events into larger socio-cultural frames of reference. Chapteres also consider how death and events are manifest through diverse platforms of mediation, with a discussion of the media presentation of end of life events, and the articulation of death online. Case studies from a wide-ranging selection of countries, from Moscow to Bangladesh to Cambodia, are examined throughout. This will be of great interest to upper-level students and researchers in event studies as well as a variety of other disciplines such as sociology and cultural studies.

Conferences and conventions are one of the fastest growing areas of the events industry. This is a substantially important sector yet research into many dimensions is in its infancy. This timely book, uniquely presents a ‘state of the art’ synthesis of the research on both demand and supply sides of the industry as well as insights into how current and future trends are affecting conferences and conventions. This volume provides a critical review of the players involved in conferences and conventions; destination image and impacts; and current and future trends. The players in the industry include attendees/delegates, professional conference organisers, and association meeting planners. On the destination side, conference venues and facilities, along with convention and visitor bureaux are examined, as well as how destination image can be developed and improved. Further, this section considers the economic, social and environmental impacts of conferences and conventions. The final section considers some of the major trends that are likely to impact on the industry, including climate change, new technologies and risk and crisis management. To reflect the sector’s international nature case studies and examples from different geographical regions are included throughout.By identifying gaps in our knowledge, and presenting a collection of themes to guide future research, this book not only adds to our current knowledge, but will underpin the advancement of knowledge in the future. This book is essential reading for all those interested in Events.

Cities and regions around the world increasingly capitalize on a series of events aimed at optimizing their reach and outcomes. How then can a series of different events be developed and harnessed? What are the conditions and the means by which synergies and collaboration among different events and their stakeholders can be fostered? This book for the first time explores how managers and host communities can synergize sport, cultural and other planned events in a portfolio in order to attain, magnify and sustain their outcomes. The incorporation of different events into a portfolio requires an integrative way of viewing the different community purposes that they serve in unison. This book elaborates on this holistic approach by developing an integrative theoretical framework for conceptualizing event portfolios, and examining their challenges and prospects as well as potential as tools for sustainable development. It therefore presents the foundations of event portfolio planning, the patterns of inter-organizational relationships within collaborative events networks that foster the conditions for community capacity-building and the requirements for the design and development of event portfolios. Topics are considered from varying perspectives and examples of emerging event portfolios from a range of geographical regions are integrated throughout.Uniquely providing a holistic framework for planning and managing a series of events this is essential reading for all those interested in Events Policy, Planning and Management.

Social impacts are increasingly used as one of the main justifications for staging and funding events, and yet there is very little empirical evidence on the extent to which these impacts are realised by different kinds of events or in different settings.This timely volume fills this gap by being the first to explore the different social aspects of events, looking in particular at the role of events in developing social capital, social cohesion and participation in local communities. Based on cutting edge empirical research, it evaluatesthe contribution of both cultural and sports events to social capital, social cohesion, community spirit and local pride in range of different types of events and settings, with case studies drawn from Europe, Australia and South Africa. It therefore furthers knowledge about the social benefits and impacts of events and significantly contributes to the development of Events as a discipline.Written by leading academics in this area, this volume is essential reading for all those interested in Events Management and Studies.

Although the event management field has grown considerably over the last decade, critical, social-scientific studies of the international events industry are rare. This book intends to help fill this void. It focuses on power, social and political relations, conflicts and controversies in the context of international events, popular festivals and famous spectacles. It draws on recent primary research and offers a diverse range of new and intriguing case studies, for example the Arirang Festival in North Korea, the Gay Games, the Gymnaestrada, horse-racing events, the London 2012 Olympics, regional and rural festivals, the World Baseball Classic, World Fairs/Expos and U2 concerts.The main aim of this volume is to bring the critical, social-scientific analysis of events, festivals and spectacles more into the core of the teaching of events management degree programmes. The book draws extensively upon the disciplines of politics, sociology, cultural studies and history.In the process, it addresses key themes such as:• political economy• politics of popular culture• the global and the local• regionalism and globalization• nations and nationalism• international relations and foreign policy.This groundbreaking collection of essays is unique and innovative. It will be an essential source for students, researchers and academics with a keen interest in critical, social-scientific analyses of events.

The importance of fashion and design in an events context remains under-researched, despite their ubiquity and significance from a societal and economic perspective. Fashion-themed events, for example, appeal to broad audiences and may tour the globe. Staging these events might help to brand destinations, boost visitor numbers and trigger popular debates about the contributions that fashion and design can make to identity. They may also tell us something about our culture and wider society.This edited volume for the first time examines fashion and design events from a social perspective, including the meanings they bestow and their potential economic, cultural and personal impacts. It explores the reasons for their popularity and influence, and provides a critique of their growth in different markets. Events examined include fashion weeks, fashion or design themed exhibitions, historical re-enactments, extreme/alternative fashion and design events, and large-scale public events such as royal weddings and horse races. International examples and case studies are drawn from countries as diverse as the USA, UK, Germany, Bhutan, New Zealand and Australia. These are used to develop and critique various thematic concepts linked to fashion and design events, such as identity, gender, aspirations and self-image, commodification, authenticity, destination development and marketing, business strategy and protection/infringement of intellectual property. Fashion, Design and Events also provides a futurist view of these types of events and sets out a future research agenda.This book has a unique focus on events associated with fashion and design and features a swathe of disciplinary backgrounds. It will appeal to a broad academic audience, such as students of art and design, cultural studies, tourism, events studies, sociology and marketing.

Event Audiences and Expectations for the first time examines why people participate in festivals and events, the types of events which stimulate participation, and the fanatical antics of fans who become involved in these events. By doing so the book offers significant insight into how event managers can entice and manage participant expectations as well as manage audience involvement. The book is based on primary research using participant observation, as well as in-depth interviews with event participants, event managers and government officials involved in over 50 international events to gain new perspectives into audience behaviour and participatory events. Using numerous international case studies and examples, the book offers a comprehensive outline of the reasons why people participate in festivals and events, the social world that reinforces their behaviours, and strategies that can be used to ensure future successful participatory events. This thought-provoking and original volume will be valuable reading for students, researchers, events managers and tourism and community planners at all levels of government.

Commemorative Events emphasise remembering. They are held on the anniversaries of significant past events, either annually or after significant time periods. Commemorative events provide fascinating insight into how societies see themselves, their heritage and their identity. These events however carry high propensity for controversy as memory and identity are highly subjective and other stakeholders hold different views of what should be commemorated and why. This is the first book to provide an in - depth critical examination of commemorative events, particularly what they mean to societies and how they are used by governments as well as impacts on other stakeholders. The book fully explores these issues by reviewing all the major types of commemorative events including, nationhood or independence, wars, battles, famous people and cultural milestones from varying geographical regions and stakeholder perspectives. By doing so the book furthers understanding of these types of events in society as well as furthering knowledge of social and political uses and impacts of events.This thought provoking volume will be valuable reading for students, researchers and academics interested in events.

Events are becoming more complex as their range of functions grows, as meeting places, creative spaces, economic catalysts, social drivers, community builders, image makers, business forums and network nodes. Effective design can produce more successful business models that can help to sustain cultural and sporting activities even in difficult economic times. This process requires creative imagination, and a design methodology or in other words ‘imagineering’. This book brings together a wide range of international experts in the fields of events, design and imagineering to examine the event design process. It explores the entire event experience from conception and production to consumption and co-creation. By doing so it offers insight into effective strategies for coping with the shift in value creation away from transactional economic value towards social and relational value which benefit a range of stakeholders from the community to policy makers. Mega-events, small community events, business events and festivals in eight different countries are examined providing an international view of social issues in event design.A wide selection of current research perspectives is employed, integrating both theoretical and applied contributions. The multidisciplinary nature of the material means that it will appeal to a broad academic audience, such as art and design, cultural studies, tourism, events studies, sociology and hospitality.

Many events have evolved over centuries, drawing on local customs and conditions. However, as the world becomes increasingly globalised, traditional events and the identities they support are increasingly being challenged and rituals may be lost. Reacting against this trend towards homogeneity, communities strive to preserve and even recreate their traditional events, which may require rituals to be resurrected or reinvented for a new audience.The aim of this book is to explore the role of traditional events and rituals in the modern world. The 16 chapters cover a range of case studies of the performance of ritual through events, including their historical antecedents and development over time, as well as their role in society, link with identities both seemingly fixed and fluid and their continued relevance. The cases examined are not museum pieces, but rather vibrant festivals and events that continue to persist. Drawing on the power of history and cultural tradition, they are manifestations of heritage, existing in three temporalities: celebrating the past, occurring in the present and aiming to continue into and influence the future. Iconic events including Chinese New Year, Hogmanay and the New Orleans Mardi Gras are examined and examples are drawn from a diverse range of countries such as South Korea, China, Laos, the United States, Scotland, Italy, India and Haiti. This volume provides a deep understanding upon the role of tradition and ritual within events, from a global perspective and will be valuable reading for students, researchers and academics interested in events, heritage and culture.

The growth of the events industry brings with it concerns of sustainable management, the sharing of available resources, and ensuring that people and places are not over-exploited. While the environmental and economic dimensions of sustainability have attracted a reasonable attention in the study of events, the social and cultural aspects of sustainability have been largely neglected. This book brings together emerging critical perspectives, innovative conceptual frameworks and contemporary case studies. Events cannot be isolated from the actions of humans and this is reflected in the emphasis on people and society throughout. The next wave of sustainable discourse requires a critical synthesis of information and this book is the first to address the need for more critical approaches and a broader way of thinking about events and sustainability.Divided into five thematic parts, the contributions delve into understanding the mainstream stances towards sustainability, the role events play in indigenous cultures and in diasporic communities, and the extent to which events influence the public discourse and civic identity. Sustainability is also examined from a strategic perspective in the events sector, and consideration is given to issues such as corporate social responsibility, greenwashing, and the power of mulit-stakeholder alliances in promoting sustainability goals. Written by leading academics, this timely and important volume will be valuable reading for all students, researchers and academics interested in Events and the global issue of Sustainability.

Volunteers make important contributions across the spectrum of event settings, most visibly at high profile mega events such as the Olympic Games they are volunteers are lauded as ‘Games makers’, ’unsung heroes’ and the like. Less visibly volunteers are the heart and soul of community events and festivals, often undertaking multi-faceted roles from event leadership through to operations and ensuring that these celebrations are made possible in the absence of big budgets and professional event staff. This book is the first to showcase and advance international research into the volunteering experience at events, drawing on the work of key scholars in this field. Events of all sizes benefit from volunteer support but event volunteering research is frequently case study-based and individually these cases make a limited impact. This text brings together cases from around the world, specifically including those that expand theoretical and methodological boundaries. It features mega events like the 2012 Olympics and the 2011 Rugby World Cup, alongside music festivals and sports events. New areas that are examined include the benefits of event volunteering for students, the role of volunteers in social enterprise events and new methodological approaches to researching this phenomenon, specifically ethnographic and cross-national studies.This innovative book acts as a global source of key information for practitioners and researchers, an important text for students of event management and will provide stimulus for further work in this emerging area.

The growth of events and festivals has been significant over the last decade and a wide range of skills are essential to ensure those events are successful. This requirement has been instrumental in stimulating the creation of more tertiary education opportunities to develop events management knowledge. As the discipline develops, knowledge requires direction in order to understand the changing advances in society.This is the first book to take a futures approach to understanding event management. A systematic and pattern-based understanding is used to determine the likelihood of future events and trends. Using blue skies scenarios to provide a vision of the future of events, not only capturing how the events industry is changing but also important issues that will affect events now as well as the future. Chapters include analysis of sustainability, security, impacts of social media, design at both mega event and community level and review a good range of different types of events from varying geographical regions. A final section captures the contributions of each chapter through the formation of a conceptual map for a future research agenda. Written by leading academics in the field, this ground breaking book will be a valuable reference point for educators, researchers and industry professionals.

This innovative and timely volume moves beyond existing operational and pragmatic approaches to events studies by exploring sports events as social, cultural, political and mediatised phenomena. As the study of this area is developing there is now a need for critical and theoretically informed debate regarding conceptualisation, significance and roles. This edited collection explores the core themes of consumption, media technologies, representation, identities and culture to offer new insight into how sports events contribute to generation of individual and shared meaning over personal, community and national identities as well as the associated issues of conflict, resistance and power. Chapters promote a critical (re)evaluation of emerging empirical research from a diverse range of sports events and locations from the international to local level. A multi-disciplinary approach is taken with contributions from areas including sports studies, media studies, sociology, cultural studies, communications, politics, tourism and gender studies.Written by leading academics in the area, this thorough exploration of the contested relationship between sports events, society and culture will be of interest to students, academics and researchers in Events, Sport, Tourism and Sociology.

Food and wine events have gained popularity internationally. Their importance in local economic development has grown, especially in Europe, as they are seen as a source of income for local economic systems, a way for creating new job positions and effective tools for promoting and increasing typical product awareness and demand.This book for the first time illustrates the positive and negative impacts of food and wine events from a stakeholder perspective by highlighting several critical aspects such as: (1) advantages and disadvantages of food and wine events; (2) best practice adoption for maximising benefits flowing from event creation; (3) community involvement and knowledge diffusion; (4) effectiveness in promoting local products and creating consumer awareness about products; (5) factors that promote or inhibit the success or achievements of wine and food events. Although the volume primarily focuses on events in Europe, comparisons are made to other regions in the world. Case studies are integrated throughout to illustrate the system of economic and social impacts linked to food and wine events, as well as best practices to achieve effective event management and maximize expected results. Written by leading academics, this timely and important volume will be valuable reading for all students, researchers and academics interested in Events, Tourism, Hospitality, Gastronomy and Development Studies.

Cultural heritage and contemporary arts benefit from being showcased in events. Arts-related events are each unique in reflecting local culture; they may be therefore spontaneous (street art and so on) or planned (i.e. studio tours or arts festivals).The Arts and Events explores the nature and complexity of managing arts events and fills a significant gap in the available literature. It investigates the history, development and management of arts events to offer much needed insight into creating economic, social and cultural capital. It therefore contributes to a greater understanding of how arts events can create a beneficial experience for the individual and the community as well as their future sustainable development. The title explores a broad range of events from around the globe including: inspirational events for building creative (social, cultural and human) capital; affirming events for encouraging links to cultural identity or heritage; pleasurable events that offer enjoyable recreational, leisure and touristic experiences; enriching events that create opportunities for personal growth and/or to sell products or experiences, and finally, celebratory events that enhance cultural diversity. This significant volume is a valuable source for researchers, policy-makers and managers of arts events around the globe.

Most early social research into planned events had the effect of broadcasting narratives of dominant cultures and privileged groups. More recently, however, convergences of gender, sexualities, ethnicities, age, class, religion, and intersectional analyses and events studies have started to drive new critical understanding of the impacts of events on non-mainstream, non-majority communities around the globe. This timely book addresses current gaps in the literature surrounding issues of accessibility, inclusion, and diversity in various event landscapes.Structured into four parts covering the main types of events, the chapters present original topics using innovative methodological approaches. Each chapter employs a case study to illustrate the key intertwining issues in these various experiential realms. Further, the chapters are all cross- or interdisciplinary, drawing on gender, sexualities, cultural, race/ethnicity studies as well as multiple literatures that feed into critical events studies and exploring a variety of global examples.This significant book opens the path to further research on the role and importance of accessibility, inclusion, and diversity in events environments worldwide. It will be of interest to academics and researchers of critical event studies as well as a number of related social science disciplines.

This book explores and advances the latest concepts and developments in event management theory and practice.Drawing on the ever-growing event management literature – and supported by theories and concepts from parent disciplines – the book examines challenges and opportunities related to maximising business and social benefits for those working in different event management positions in a variety of contexts. Written by an international team of five management scholars, the book investigates event management and leverage from various angles, including international business, event business studies, sport management, community development, and business strategy. It does so by offering a combination of theoretical approaches as well as contemporary cases from around the world.This book will be of interest to undergraduate and postgraduate students of event management, as well as scholars researching in social and business-related areas of event management and leverage.

The roles and impacts of planned events within tourism are of increasing importance for destination competitiveness. Tourism Events in Asia is a unique contribution to the understanding of the impacts of events in the development planning, promotion and marketing of destinations in the rapidly growing tourism market of Asia. Balancing theory and practical examples, the book analyses the tools and techniques of branding, marketing and media involvement as well as visitor motivations for successful tourism events in Asia. It reviews a range of different event types from dark tourism festivals, film tourism festivals, cultural heritage tourism festivals, food tourism festivals, business events, sports events; and meeting, incentives, conferences and exhibitions (MICE) and much more.Written by an international team of authors, this book is essential reading for anyone interested in the Asian tourism events market and will be a valuable resource for students and researchers of events, tourism, marketing and branding.

This book is the first to take an in-depth examination of the breadth and scope of exhibitions, trade fairs and other industrial events as a marketing tool or channel. Industrial Events are planned events that are staged with the primary aim of marketing businesses, industries and products. This may lead to direct sales through these events, as well as the development of brand image or building brand awareness; penetration of new markets; trials of new products and knowledge diffusion. These business goals might be future-focused, with meetings of strategic players from across an industry or sector contributing to the shaping of future innovations and development. Industrial events act as a marketplace, but rather than seeing them as temporary or isolated activities, they can be understood as cyclical clusters.This is a multidisciplinary book written by an international group of leading academics, offering a wide range of case studies that feature countries such as the United Kingdom, United States of America, Japan, South Korea, Saudi Arabia, Australia and New Zealand. It will appeal to students and researchers in the fields of cultural studies, history, tourism, sociology, economics and management

Festivals and events are of enormous significance to many communities around the world. They can have historic, religious, cultural and traditional significance, and they are also important parts of community building.This book focuses on these small-scale, non-metropolitan events (i.e. rural, regional and peri-urban) to explore the complex relationships between place, community and identity and the ways in which festival events bring these into being. By drawing on the notion of ‘encounter’, this book examines how festivals and events can be seen primarily as spaces where different people meet. This notion of encounter helps us to understand how conviviality and social relations are developed, and what this then means in terms of social cohesion and social justice. It also draws on current theoretical and methodological approaches that can tell us about the role of festivals in contemporary life, and it includes the sensual approach, the geographies of affect and emotion, the notion of the right to the city and nonrepresentation theory.The book brings together these perspectives and examines their relevance in the community events context, identifying and discussing theoretical frameworks drawn from (including but not limited to) human geography, sociology, anthropology, leisure studies and urban planning, as well as tourism and event studies. For these reasons, Festival Encounters will be a valuable read for students and academics working on a wide range of disciplines.

Within events management, events are commonly categorised within two axes, size and content. Along the size axis events range between the small scale and local, through major events, which garner greater media interest, to internationally significant hallmark and mega events such as the Edinburgh Festival and the Tour de France. Content is frequently divided into three forms – culture, sport or business. However, such frameworks overlook and depoliticise a significant variety of events, those more accurately construed as protest.This book brings together new research and theories from around the world and across sociology, leisure studies, politics and cultural studies to develop a new critical pedagogy and critical theory of events. It is the first research monograph that deals explicitly with the concept of critical event studies (CES), the idea that it is impossible to explore and understand events without understanding the wider social, cultural and political contexts. It addresses questions such as can the occupation and reclamation of specific spaces by activists be understood as events within its framework? And is the activity of activists in these spaces a leisure activity? If those, and other similar activities, can be read as events and leisure, what does admitting them into the scope of events management and leisure studies mean for our understanding of them and how the study of events management is to be conceptualised? This title will be of interest to undergraduate and postgraduate students on events management and related courses and scholars interested in understanding the ways in which events are constructed by the social, the cultural and the political.

The recent proliferation of events as a subject of study in its own right has signalled the emergence of a new field – event studies. However, whilst the management-inspired notion of planned events, which strives for conceptual slenderness, may indeed be useful for event managers, the moment we attempt to advance knowledge about events as social, cultural and political phenomena, we realise the extent to which the field is theoretically impoverished. Event studies, it is argued, must transcend overt business-like perspectives in order to grasp events in their complexities.This book challenges the reader to reach beyond the established modes of thinking about events by placing them against a backdrop of much wider, critical discourse. Approaches and Methods in Event Studies emerges as a conceptual and methodological tour de force—comprising the works of scholars of diverse backgrounds coming together to address a range of philosophical, theoretical, and methods-related problems. The areas covered include the concepts of eventification and eventual approaches to events, a mobilities paradigm, rhizomatic events, critical discourse analysis, visual methods, reflexive and ethnographic research into events, and indigenous acumen. Researchers and students engaged in the study of events will draw much inspiration from the contributions and from the volume as a whole.